Glastonbury Programme

Glastonbury Free Press

Message from Yoko Ono

Earlier this year I played two small shows in Dalston in London and another musician who came said to me that he would love to see me do a similar type of show, but at Glastonbury. And I got very excited about that – so excited that when people were saying I should wait until 2015 I didn’t want to wait that long! Why not now?! So I was really thrilled when the Festival organisers said that they not only wanted me this year but that they wanted to give me a really good slot on Sunday night on the Park stage. I was a happy girl!

As well as performing at 6pm on Sunday with a new incarnation of Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, featuring members of the amazing Yo La Tengo, I will also be installing wish trees at the Green Kids Field. I hope everyone who can will go and make a wish and attach it to the tree. The wishes will then all be collected, sent to me and then will be kept underneath Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland – in memory of my husband John Lennon and our collective desire for peace in the world.

I have never been to Glastonbury, and I can’t wait! Who knows what I will see! The line-up is amazing and, for me, coming from the avant grade world, it’s so great to see so much diversity and experimentation. I would like everyone who comes to the Festival to have fun, keep their minds open to new things and also to think of a day when we will have world peace. Together we can make it!

And I came to tell you what fun it is to work for world peace. It’s the most fun work there is now in our planet. So let’s get together and have a lot of fun! Hope to see you there.

I love you! yoko x

NME

The Park Stage was a perfect Pilton setting for Yoko Ono. The 81-year-old’s calls to change the world fit right in with the enormous “Save Glasto from fracking” banners held up by her crowd, which included a woman wearing an amazingly mud-free kimono and a bearded Dolly lookalike. Backed up by cult indie rockers Yo La Tengo, Ono whooped and yelled into the microphone with a power that belied her tiny frame.

Endearingly, she worked her way through her set with the aid of a laminated songbook on a music stand, which she referred to when she wasn’t dancing or sharing wisdom-tinged anecdotes. Ono encouraged patience: “some things take time in life – you know we did the bed in. That still hasn’t changed that much.” It was sage advice: after the inevitable wait to get out of the car parks tomorrow, this year’s attendees will have to pass another 12 months before being able to do it all over again.

First created by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969, the Plastic Ono band has come to represent a collection of collaborations, most recently including Thurston Moore, Sean Lennon and Cornelius.
Named after a sculpture involving cameras and plastic plinths, the ever-changing line up and fragile Ono vocals set them apart as a historic movement in music. Upcoming album Take Me To The Land of Hell is gaining rave reviews despite not even being released yet, with The Sunday Times calling it ‘an instrument of power and wonder’. Prepare to be astounded.

In these faraway meadows you also stumble across the hippie-rock icons of yesteryear. At 81, Yoko Ono must be the oldest performer here, but still one of the most vital as she fights to keep the 1960s avant-garde aesthetic alive. Playing the Park Stage with the Plastic Ono Band, Yoko reads poems and blessings between discordant howls, screeches and drones. It is close to unlistenable at times, but easily the most exhilarating and experimental noise-rock performance of the weekend. Respect is due.

Yoko Ono excited for Glastonbury 2014 and says John Lennon would have loved it

Yoko Ono has admitted she can’t wait to get muddy performing at Glastonbury – and is convinced John Lennon would have loved being at the festival.

The 81-year-old is planning a spectacular appearance on stage on Sunday along with a new backing band made up of American indie group Yo La Tengo.

Asked if she thought Beatle Lennon would have been a fan of the festival, she told the Mirror: “Yes, he would have loved it, I’m sure. Because the music is great but its about so much more than the music.

“The giant which Michael and Emily Eavis are creating for the world is so big, it cannot be called a music show only. I respect what they have done tremendously. I would not have thought of the possibility of me crawling in the mud with four limbs, unless I had so much respect for this event.

“I have never been to Glastonbury. Obviously I’ve heard lots about it and I know lots of other musicians who have played, but this is a first for me.

“I like doing new things, though I am always very scared to make that new step.”

Yoko warmed up for her Glastonbury appearance playing a secret gig in Brooklyn New York earlier in the week.

She wants to explore but won’t camp on site. She said: “No, I’m staying in a hotel. I will have just flown in from New York and I heard it might be muddy so I want to be able to put everything into my performance and I think that might be tough if I just crawled out of a tent. A tent would have been cooler, probably. But I’m not vain.

“I’m looking forward to say hello to my old friends. Also I want to explore all the different areas.

“I’ve got some wish trees around the site where people can put their wishes on the tree and then they are all eventually sent to the Imagine peace Tower in Reyjkavik via me.”

Yoko, who was married to John Lennon when he was shot dead in 1980, continues to tour the world making music and art.

For Sunday’s performance her rider request for her dressing room consists of just “tea, water and lots of coffee” because she doesn’t drink alcohol.

“Often the best shows I’ve done have been in really small venues where they don’t even have a dressing room!” she said.

Asked how she defies feeling old, Yoko said: “I simply ignore age! Just be myself, instead of following terrible conventions about age in our society.”

Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band will play The Park Stage at Glastonbury Festival on Sunday 29 June 2014.

Yoko Ono is to install ‘wish trees’ in the Green Kids Field at Glastonbury Festival, with the wishes collected and kept underneath the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland, in memory of her late husband John Lennon.

Writing for The Glastonbury Free Press, which is distributed on site, Ono says she first set her sights on appearing at the festival after performing two small shows in Dalston, London, earlier this year.

Ono wrote: “Earlier this year I played two small shows in Dalston in London and another musician who came said to me that he would love to see me do a similar type of show but at Glastonbury. And I got very excited about that – so excited that when people were saying I should wait until 2015 I didn’t want to wait that long!”

Ono performs on Sunday at 6pm at the Park Stage with a new incarnation of the Plastic Ono Band featuring members of Yo La Tengo. Writing in the Free Press, she says her hope is for everyone who comes to the festival to “think of a day when we will have world peace. Together we can make it!”

Glastonbury 2014 opened its gates at 8am yesterday (June 25), when queues of people were waiting to enter the Worthy Farm site in Pilton, Somerset.

Though there is a limited musical programme today (June 26), the festival proper begins tomorrow, when Arcade Fire headline the Pyramid Stage.

YOKO ONO’S WISH TREE FOR GLASTONBURY 2014

If you are going to Glastonbury Festival this year, please visit The Ancient Oak in The Green Kids Field, where you can add your wishes to Yoko Ono’s WISH TREE.

Yoko Ono’s Wish Trees under The Ancient Oak in The Greenpeace Kids Field.

Yoko Ono’s Wish Trees in the Peace Garden in the Stone Circle Field

Wish Pencils

Give Peace A Chance!

AN OAK TREE AND YOKO ONO’s IMAGINE PEACE TOWER

“I hope IMAGINE PEACE TOWER will give light to the strong wishes of World Peace from all corners of the planet and give encouragement, inspiration and a sense of solidarity in a world now filled with fear and confusion”
– Yoko Ono Lennon. October 2013.

IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is an outdoor work of art conceived by Yoko Ono in memory of John Lennon. It is situated on Viðey Island in Reykjavík, Iceland. It is a Tower of Light which emanates wisdom, healing and joy. It communicates awareness to the whole world that peace & love is what connects all lives on Earth. The artwork was dedicated to John by Yoko at its unveiling on October 9th 2007, John Lennon’s 67th birthday.

THE WISH TREES

Yoko tells the story –

“As a child in Japan, I used to go to a temple and write out a wish on a piece of thin paper and tie it around the branch of a tree. Trees in temple courtyards were always filled with people’s wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar.”

Yoko Ono’s interactive artwork WISH TREE has been integral to many of her exhibitions around the world in museums and cultural centers where people have been invited to write their personal wishes for peace and tie them to a tree branch. Yoko has collected all the wishes – currently totaling over a million, which are all sent to IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.

During the Festival, you can come and write a wish and put it on our Wish Trees, which will be smaller trees around the base of The Ancient Oak in The Green Kids Field.

At the end of the Festival, all the wishes will be sent to IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland.